Patrick Cloney, the day’s tour guide, smiled at Eliot, 12, from the Neighborhood School in Jamaica Plain. Cloney is executive director of the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, which promotes renewable energy. The agency had invited the boy and his mother to tour the month-old, $30 million facility after hearing about Eliot’s project, which analyzed different renewable energy sources, including turbines.
“So you like wind blades?’’ Cloney asked.
“Yep,’’ replied Eliot (inset), donning a lime green hard hat.
“Well, we’ve got a little one right here,’’ Cloney said, only half joking. The center, he explained, was built to test blades up to 300 feet long, or about the length of a football field. The $200,000 Clipper blade mounted in the facility’s test bay was only about half that size.
“The expectation,’’ Cloney said, “is that some day we will be standing here with a 90-meter blade,’’ or one nearly 300 feet long.
As many as three blades can be tested at one time, said Rahul Yarala, the testing center’s executive director. He pointed out the different machines and contraptions used to put a blade through its paces: a reinforced cement mounting wall; black hydraulic winching towers; block-shaped devices, called saddles, that fit around a blade like water wings and are used to apply stress and force; and gauges to measure the blade’s response under load.
The facility already has 18 months of work lined up, said Richard K. Sullivan Jr., the state’s energy and environmental affairs secretary.
“It’s creating jobs, it’s showing that there is a demand for this type of facility,’’ he said.
Wayne G. Monie, TPI Composites’ chief financial officer, said the company decided to open a wind blade innovation center in Fall River partly because of the proximity to the state’s testing facility and the ease with which they can transport a blade there by barge. The company is working on a new prototype for Clipper Windpower.
